PECKING ORDER

Language is said to make us human. What if birds talk, too?

- RIVKA GALCHEN

On a drizzly day in Grünau im Almtal, Austria, a gaggle of greylag geese shared a peaceful moment on a grassy field near a stream. One goose, named Edes, was preening quietly; others were resting with their beaks pointed tailward, nestled into their feathers. Then a camouflaged speaker that scientists had placed nearby started to play. First came a recorded honk from an unpartnered male goose named Joshua. Edes went on with his preening. Next came a honk that was lower in pitch than the first, with a slight bray. Edes looked up.

As the other geese remained tucked in their warm positions, incurious, Edes scanned the field. He had just heard a recorded "distance call" from his life partner, a female goose whom scientists had named Bon Jovi.

Edes and his fellow-geese live near the Konrad Lorenz Research Center for Behavior and Cognition, which is named for a Nobel laureate whose imprinting experiments, in the nineteen-thirties, convinced goslings that he was their mother. (They took to following him in a downy line.) Greylag geese in the area have been studied continually ever since. The director of the center, a biologist and bird ecologist named Sonia Kleindorfer, showed me footage of Edes to demonstrate the subtlety of goose communication.